The present invention is related to a calculation method for packing a plurality of wires having different diameters which constitute a wire harness, or the like, as compact as possible, and is related to a wire packing calculation apparatus. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a wire packing calculation method and a wire packing calculation apparatus, capable of largely shortening packing calculation time.
In vehicles and indoor spaces, wire-shaped structural articles known as a “wire harness” have been arranged in distribution manners, while these wire-shaped structural articles are constituted by bundling wires such as a plurality of electric wires, and electrically connect electronic appliances, electronic components, and the like to each other. Very recently, there has been an increased demand to manufacture such a wire harness as compact as possible without lowering electric characteristics thereof in view of improvements in space efficiencies. To satisfy these requirements, a wire harness which is made as compact as possible should be previously calculated in design stages of the wire harness. Conventionally, no specific calculation method for effectively calculating such a wire harness in the design stage has been proposed.
Under such a circumstance, the Applicant of the present invention has proposed a calculation method in Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-179718. That is, in this calculation method, while a computer is employed, respective circles corresponding to sectional shapes of a plurality of wires are bundled in a circular shape as small as possible in such a manner that these circles are not overlapped with each other, and the bundled circles are packed, and then, both an outer diameter of this packed circles and positional information of the respective wires are acquired. As a result, an inclusive circle could be calculated when the plurality of circles are bundled in the circular shape as small as possible in such a manner that these plural circles are not overlapped with each other, and the bundled circles are packed, although this calculation could not be conventionally performed. An inclusive circle corresponds to a sectional area of wire harness in which a plurality of wires have been bundled.
Following publications are related to the present patent application. Non-patent publication 1: “Spatial Tesselations-Concepts and Applications of Voronoi Diagrams” written by A. Okabe, B. Boots, K. Sugihara and S. N. Choi, Version 2, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester in 2000, non-patent publication 2: “Voronoi diagram of a circle set from Voronoi diagram of a point set, I” written by D. S. Kim and K. Sugihara, pages 541 to 562, volume 18. Topology Computer Aided Geometric Design in 2001 and non-patent publication 3; “Voronoi diagram of a circle set from Voronoi diagram of a point set, II” written by D. S. Kim and K. Sugihara, pages 563 to 585, volume 18, Geometry Computer Aided Geometric Design in 2001.
The packing calculation method of Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-179718 can execute the general-purpose calculation of the inclusive circles in the case that the plural circles are bundled in the circular shape as small as possible in such a manner that these circles are not overlapped with each other, and then, the bundled circles are packed, although this calculation could not be conventionally carried out. However, when this packing calculation method calculates such an inclusive circle with respect to a plurality of circles whose dimensions are different from each other, there are some cases that a total calculation time is prolonged, depending upon initial arrangements of these plural circles having the different dimensions. In other words, in the packing calculations for wire harness, or the like, which is constituted by a plurality of wires having different diameters, there are some cases that a total packing calculation time is prolonged.